How Small Businesses Can Rebound from the Holiday Lull

| StreetShares Blog

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official opinions, policies, or positions of StreetShares or any of its affiliates.

Most small businesses experience a significant dip in business during the holiday season. From the middle of December to the beginning of January, small businesses suffer as local customers are on vacation or saving to recover from the holidays.

Even if you do your best to prepare for this slow time of year, your small business is still likely to experience some negative consequences. If you find yourself in this position, consider implementing some of these strategies to help your small business rebound from the holiday lull.

Cut Unnecessary Expenses

If your small business has suffered a recent dip in revenue due to the slow holiday season, then the new year is a great time to review and cut unnecessary expenses.

Year-end reviews are a very common business practice; however, you should make the extra effort to cut any costs that you can live without -- at least until your business has bounced back from the holidays. This could include anything from cutting marketing campaigns which aren’t generating a reasonable ROI to reducing spending on surplus supplies.

The best way to recover from a slow period is to make sure that you’re saving as much as possible.

Revamp Your Pricing Strategy

Many small businesses offer lower prices through the holidays in order to stay competitive and attract customers.

However, as the holiday season comes to an end, you should seriously consider revamping your pricing strategy. In most cases, small businesses simply opt to return to the pricing model that they used before the holidays. In some cases, though, this might not be the best option for businesses which have surplus holiday inventory.

Instead, you might consider staggering prices to unload excess holiday inventory without lowering prices on your regular product offerings.

Increase Your Social Media Activity

If you’re not taking advantage of social media, you’re making a mistake. Even as a small business, increasing your social media presence can be incredibly effective at expanding your reach in your local area. 

Services like Hootsuite and Buffer can make producing engaging social media content easy as they allow you to schedule your posts in advance. All it takes is a little bit of time and planning at the beginning of every month. 

Increasing your social media activity is one of the easiest and most effective ways to increase your small business’ online footprint.

Also by Justin Song: Break Through These 5 Common Mistakes for Veteran Business Owners

Implement New Marketing Strategies

While cutting out ineffective marketing strategies is one of the easiest ways to cut unnecessary spending, implementing new, profitable marketing strategies can be a cost-effective way to help your business bounce back from a rough holiday season.

Google AdWords is one of the more popular and cost-effective online marketing services. Essentially, AdWords allows you to create advertisements based on certain keywords. You then bid on these keywords against competitors in order to get the top-ranking advertisement on Google when users search for that keyword. As AdWords works on a PPC model, you only have to pay when users click on your advertisement. This can help you generate a better ROI as, generally, only users who are interested in your business will click on your advertisements. 

Additionally, as a cheaper option, you can focus your efforts on improving your small business’ SEO. Search engine optimization is a great way to ensure that your business’ website ranks highly on popular search engines like Google and Bing. While SEO is a cheaper option than AdWords, you should keep in mind that it takes time for SEO to start producing significant results.

Replacing your ineffective marketing strategies can be a great way to help your small business rebound after a holiday lull.

Establish a Repayment Plan

As many small businesses are already operating on thin margins, a lot of business owners find themselves struggling to manage their cash flow during the slow holiday season. As a result, they turn to cash flow loans to keep their heads above water.

If your business relied on financing to make it through the holiday loan, working with your loan provider to establish a reasonable and affordable repayment plan should be one of your top priorities. In order to fully recover from the holiday lull, your small business needs to repay the debt that it incurred as a result of this time of the year.

As the holiday season can be an incredibly difficult time of year for small businesses, many business owners find themselves struggling to recover from this slow season. As a small business owner, you should consider implementing one or more of these strategies to help your business rebound from the holiday lull.

For an even more detailed look into the various growth strategies that could help make your business a success, download the ebook, "9 Tips to Grow Your Business." Achieving business growth is critical to business success over the long term. Learn about these growth strategies in this easily digestible ebook, which includes information on small business funding for veterans.

This communication is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be an advertisement, a solicitation, or constitute professional advice, including legal, financial,  or tax advice, nor is StreetShares providing advice on any particular situation.